


Requiem

by Glishara



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-23
Updated: 2010-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-11 05:21:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glishara/pseuds/Glishara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a good day to burn an offering, balanced between summer and winter, life and death...</p><p>Written for the prompt: "Aral burns an offering at the grave of his first wife. Set anytime," suggested by avanti_90 in the 2010 Bujold Ficathon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Requiem

It had started as duty, something that ought to be done. It had continued as habit, something that he always did. It was ritual, now, and therefore sacred. Aral had never told anyone about it. It was just a thing he did.

If he couldn't be on-planet, he did it in his room. If he could, however, he liked to be at her grave. It was in the Vorkosigan plot, which seemed a mockery, somehow. Too late to change now. He would find an excuse to fly out to the district, and he would build a little fire there.

It was a gorgeous day for the visit, with clear blue skies and an autumn bite to the air. It was a good day to burn an offering, balanced between summer and winter, life and death. As he usually did these last years, Aral stopped first at his father's grave and snipped a few blades of grass from just below the headstone. He placed a hand on the stone and wondered, as he always did. He remembered the sight of her, that last night, and saw the flame of plasma fire light the space behind his eyes. His hand on his father's grave, he wondered if the old man had been so cruel a murderer. It was a man's weapon, though – a soldier's weapon.

He would never know. He moved away, the grass in one hand, and moved to her grave. It was harder to kneel these days, but he lowered himself stiffly, like a knight to his lady. She had been such, once, after all.

The stone before him read, simply, "Lady Nadia Vorrutyer Vorkosigan," and then the dates. He traced the letters with a fingertip; he studied the dates. She had not seemed so young to him then, but then, he had been a boy himself. His own children had lived much longer than she had, and she was left as an occasionally titillating blip in the colored history of the Butcher of Komarr. She had deserved better.

He had brought what he needed to build the fire with him, and he set about the work with the precision and skill of long practice. How many such fires had he burned in his lifetime now? More than he could count, beginning with the full funeral pyre for his mother, which he had lit with a steady hand. He'd already cried all his tears for her before the funeral had begun. He had lit Nadia's pyre when not much older. His father's came much later. Little ones like this, for anniversary or remembrance, came yearly. He had his cycles, his routines. His rituals.

He piled sticks and dried grass, and placed the blades of grass from his father's grave atop it. He reached up to snip a few strands of hair from his own head, a white fuzz left in his palm. He added it to the heap. He looked at the forlorn little mound, and then lit it: no point in stalling.

As the smoke from it climbed in a thin line, spun and broken by the wind, Aral remembered her eyes and the power of her smile, the beauty in the lines of her face. He remembered their first dance at their wedding, the eyes of the crowds on him and his fierce, hot pride in this beautiful woman, now his. He did not think of the days before her death. He tried to imagine how she would have aged, but could not. She was too young, her beauty too knife-edged. There was a fragility to it. Would it have softened, or broken? No one would ever know now.

The fire sputtered and sparked, then smoldered down to nothing, smoke still trailing up from the little pile of ashes. Aral watched it until it died. Died, like Nadia. Died, like his mother, and his father. Died like he would before long. He had Miles, he knew, to carry on. What had Nadia had, what but the hole he had carved in her?

He pulled his knife from his belt, a simple steel-bladed camp knife, and opened it. With a clean, decisive stroke, he cut across the palm of his hand, red blood welling in its wake. He held it over the little fire and squeezed until a few drops fell on the hot ashes. "Blood for blood, my lady," he said, his voice low. "I have done you wrong, and there is no answer I can give but the memory." He knelt there for a moment, letting that memory live in his mind.

When it had dropped away, he pulled a small bottle of liquid bandage and sealed the cut. Aral rose – stiffly – and brushed off the knees of his trousers. He walked back to the lightflyer. Then Viceroy Count Aral Vorkosigan climbed in, and started back towards Vorbarr Sultana, and the heavier burdens that awaited him.


End file.
